Birchtree
Yet more YouTube videos I've enjoyed recently
I guess this is a series now…
Do you have a chair where "half dirty" clothes go? If so, this chair...
a week ago
I guess this is a series now…
Do you have a chair where "half dirty" clothes go? If so, this chair will be very compelling.
I'm not a big fan of most Apple TV+ shows, but Severance was lovely and I can't wait
Willem's Blog
Do amazing things with a focused mind
Read about my experience during the workshop I got as a birth day present involving the Wim Hof...
over a year ago
Read about my experience during the workshop I got as a birth day present involving the Wim Hof Method.
Yazin Alirhayim
The Trouble With Optionality
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one...
over a year ago
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one morning thinking “Why, it appears I’ve spent the past several decades of my life optimizing for optionality. Perhaps I should figure out why?”.
Most don’t even recognize the term –...
Home on Erik...
NYC subway math
Apparently MTA (the company running the NYC subway) has a real-time API. My fascination for the...
over a year ago
Apparently MTA (the company running the NYC subway) has a real-time API. My fascination for the subway takes autistic proportions and so obviously I had to analyze some of the data. The documentation is somewhat terrible, but here's some relevant code for how to use the API:
Arduino Blog
Discover the new Arduino UNO SPE Shield: the quick and easy way to advanced connectivity
Arduino and Microchip are excited to open electronica – the “world’s leading trade fair and...
a month ago
Arduino and Microchip are excited to open electronica – the “world’s leading trade fair and conference for electronics” – by introducing the Arduino UNO SPE Shield, a powerful ally to bring advanced connectivity to new and existing projects, with Single-Pair Ethernet (SPE) and...
Jonas Hietala
A friendly game of Twilight Imperium
A few weeks ago I played my first game of Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition). It was fantastic.
We...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago I played my first game of Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition). It was fantastic.
We were six players, most had played the third edition before. As I was quite hyped before the game, I had read up on the rules, watched a let’s play or two and listened to a podcast...
Louwrentius
'Linux: using disk labels to counter storage device name changes'
My router decided to change the device name for some USB storage devices. So
/dev/sdc was swapped...
over a year ago
My router decided to change the device name for some USB storage devices. So
/dev/sdc was swapped for /dev/sdd and vice versa. The result was some file
system corruption on /dev/sdc, because it was used on a remote system through
iSCSI, using a different file system from...
Notes on software...
Writing a minimal Lua implementation with a virtual machine from scratch in Rust
By the end of this guide we'll have a minimal, working implementation
of a small part of Lua from...
over a year ago
By the end of this guide we'll have a minimal, working implementation
of a small part of Lua from scratch. It will be able to run the
following program (among others):
function fib(n)
if n < 2 then
return n;
end
local n1 = fib(n-1);
local n2 = fib(n-2);
...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Bir Proof of Stake Tasarım Felsefesi
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
I designed my own keyboard layout. Was it worth it?
Almost two and a half years ago I embarked on the journey to change keyboard layout.
At first I...
a year ago
Almost two and a half years ago I embarked on the journey to change keyboard layout.
At first I tried out existing ones, but it didn’t take long before I figured it’s better to develop my own—and things went downhill fast from there.
(Some) combos of the T-34 layout.
But now...
Jonas Hietala
Mining Incorporated (unfinished)
Download
Linux 64bit
Windows
Timelapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIbr-mLi4DU
I made a very...
over a year ago
Download
Linux 64bit
Windows
Timelapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIbr-mLi4DU
I made a very serious attempt at making a grand game for Ludum Dare 29. Unfortunately it was a far, far, too big of a game for me to be able to finish it in one weekend. But I had a great...
Jonas Hietala
Dijkstra's Algorithm
For rust, I’m updating the documentation for the standard library and specifically with the...
over a year ago
For rust, I’m updating the documentation for the standard library and specifically with the collections. For the priority queue I had the idea to use Dijkstra’s algorithm as a fun example. That idea was well received and that example is now live.
At first I wanted to use A* to...
Jonas Hietala
ghc 8.8.3 cannot find cabal 3.0.0.0 packages
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system...
over a year ago
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system it suddenly stopped working. I installed my dependencies with cabal install xmonad, and checked that it’s installed under ~/.cabal:
$ ls .cabal/bin/
xmonad@
But still when I...
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 4. a database/sql driver
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions...
over a year ago
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
In this post, we'll extend gosql
to implement the database/sql driver interface. This will
allow us to interact with gosql the same way we would...
On Life and Lisp
Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux
We’re excited to announce our first Apple GPU driver release!
We’ve been working hard over the past...
over a year ago
We’re excited to announce our first Apple GPU driver release!
We’ve been working hard over the past two years to bring this new driver to everyone, and we’re really proud to finally be here. This is still an alpha driver, but it’s already good enough to run a smooth desktop...
Avestura's Blog
How optimistic or pessimistic are the Kurzgesagt videos?
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
a year ago
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
Posts on Made of...
Why scons is cool
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not...
over a year ago
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not perfect, but I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that it’s a probably far better choice than make in many cases. The main exceptions would be cases where you need to integrate into legacy...
Louwrentius
'Improved' image gallery for Blogofile
This blog is just static HTML pages that are generated using Blogofile. The Blogofile website sports...
over a year ago
This blog is just static HTML pages that are generated using Blogofile. The Blogofile website sports a small image gallery that has been written to illustrate how to create your own 'controllers' or Blogofile plugins.
My Python skills are horrible buy I managed to improve a bit...
Home on Erik...
MCMC for marketing data
The other day I was looking at marketing spend broken down by channel and wanted to compute some...
over a year ago
The other day I was looking at marketing spend broken down by channel and wanted to compute some simple uncertainty estimates. I have data like this:
<th> Total spend </th> <th> Transactions </th> Channel A <td> 2292.
Notes on software...
Static analysis with semgrep: practical examples using Docker
In this post we'll get a basic semgrep environment set up in Docker
running some custom rules...
over a year ago
In this post we'll get a basic semgrep environment set up in Docker
running some custom rules against our code.
Existing linters
Linters like pylint for Python or
eslint for JavaScript are great for general,
broad language standards. But what about common nits in code review
like...
Home on Erik...
Books I read in 2015
Early last year when I left Spotify I decided to do more reading. I was planning to read at least...
over a year ago
Early last year when I left Spotify I decided to do more reading. I was planning to read at least one book per week and in particular I wanted to brush up on management, economics, and technology.
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Black and White
All this time working on my latest game I thought it sucked and I was trying hard to make it to not...
over a year ago
All this time working on my latest game I thought it sucked and I was trying hard to make it to not suck. My spirit wasn’t high, just check this post and this but now when it’s done it’s like night and day, or like black and white! I’m damn happy I got it done!! Aah I’ll try to...
Matt Blewitt
Control Loops and Rice Cookers
Rice cookers are fascinating machines. I’ve owned one for years, as rice is a significant part of my...
over a year ago
Rice cookers are fascinating machines. I’ve owned one for years, as rice is a significant part of my regular diet, and it completely removes the stress of preparing rice. They also operate on a simple principle that can help us operate cloud infrastructure – the control loop.
Willem's Blog
Art of visualisation
You learn from experts if you have the privilege to work with them, this month I had a chance to...
over a year ago
You learn from experts if you have the privilege to work with them, this month I had a chance to help a professional food photographer.
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 01: UX improvements
a year ago
heavymeta.org
CrowdStrike's Impact on Aviation
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike...
4 months ago
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike YOLOed a software update to millions of Windows machines. Or
as they put it:
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike
released a sensor...
./techtipsy
TOMO M4: probably the coolest power bank I've owned
A friend once showed me a power bank that was so cool that I had to get one
myself. Ended up getting...
a year ago
A friend once showed me a power bank that was so cool that I had to get one
myself. Ended up getting two, and here’s why.
This post is not sponsored.
Removable batteries
Let’s start with the feature that I appreciate the most: removable batteries!
The TOMO M4 accepts up to 4...
Style over Substance
DIY: Use an IKEA VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor in Home Assistant with ESPHome
IKEA has released some interesting new products lately, focused on air quality. In this product...
over a year ago
IKEA has released some interesting new products lately, focused on air quality. In this product line, one unit that stands out is the VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor. This cheap (just €9,99) sensor measures the air quality in your home, using a simple traffic light scheme to...
Louwrentius
20 disk 18 TB RAID 6 storage based on Debian Linux
This system is no longer operational and has been decomissioned (2017)
This is my NAS storage server...
over a year ago
This system is no longer operational and has been decomissioned (2017)
This is my NAS storage server based on Debian Linux. It uses software RAID and 20 one
terrabyte hard drives. It provides a total usable storage capacity of 18 terrabytes in a single RAID 6 array.
One of the...
./techtipsy
Cool projects
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took some old Chromebooks, stripped them down and built a cluster. I love this kind of jank!
Odds and Ends of...
Important information if you used my Bluesky MP follows bot
Please read this immediately.
2 weeks ago
Please read this immediately.
Electronics etc…
Zephyr Ravenna Control Board Replacement
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing...
7 months ago
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing Information
Two PCBs - Control Board & Switch Assembly
Switch of the Breaker!!!
Glass Canopy Removal
Duct Cover Removal
Swapping the Control...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 3
Windows becomes competitive
a year ago
Windows becomes competitive
Jonas Hietala
CS:GO AWP Nerf
When this man opens his mouth, truth comes out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsFnJYJ2buU
If I...
over a year ago
When this man opens his mouth, truth comes out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsFnJYJ2buU
If I ever make a game and I want someone to balance it and I had the money, I would hire Thorin.
Engineers Need Art
Offline Advocate
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of...
a month ago
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of mind.
Jonas Hietala
Notifications with xmonad/irssi/urxvt
So I’ve been idling on irc for years now and I’ve been using irssi for that, which works fine. I...
over a year ago
So I’ve been idling on irc for years now and I’ve been using irssi for that, which works fine. I have not had notifications enabled, so I can see from the statusbar whenever someone messages me. As I’ve never been very active this has been fine, but now I figured it’s time to fix...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Moving beyond coin voting governance
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
MUSE in Carré
MUSE's legendary rock fused with Amsterdam's Royal Theatre Carré for an unforgettable, electrifying...
over a year ago
MUSE's legendary rock fused with Amsterdam's Royal Theatre Carré for an unforgettable, electrifying experience - read about my experience!
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside a vintage aerospace navigation computer of uncertain purpose
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation...
6 months ago
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation system.
Aerospace computers are an interesting but mostly neglected area of computer hardware, so I'm always delighted to
examine one up close.
In an era when most computers were large...
On Life and Lisp
The first conformant M1 GPU driver
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the...
a year ago
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the drivers are compatible with any OpenGL ES
3.1 application. Interested? Just install Linux!
For existing Asahi Linux users,
upgrade your system with dnf
upgrade (Fedora) or pacman
-Syu...
Old Vintage...
The unreleased Commodore HHC-4's secret identity
Once upon a time (and that time was Winter CES 1983), Commodore announced what was to be their one...
a month ago
Once upon a time (and that time was Winter CES 1983), Commodore announced what was to be their one and only handheld computer, the Commodore HHC-4. It was never released and never seen again, at least not in that form. But it turns out that not only did the HHC-4 actually exist,...
Electronics etc…
Remote Controlling an HP 1670G Logic Analyzer with a Linux PC X Server
Introduction
Reserving a fixed IP address for the logic analyzer
Assign the chosen IP address to the...
12 months ago
Introduction
Reserving a fixed IP address for the logic analyzer
Assign the chosen IP address to the logic analyzer
Allow the logic analyzer to access your Ubuntu X server
Configure the X-window Settings on the logic analyzer
Install and declare the HP logic analyzer font...
Notes on software...
io_uring basics: Writing a file to disk
King and I wrote a blog
post
about building an event-driven cross-platform IO library that...
a year ago
King and I wrote a blog
post
about building an event-driven cross-platform IO library that used
io_uring on Linux. We sketched out how it works at a high level but I
hadn't yet internalized how you actually code with io_uring. So I
strapped myself down this week and wrote...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Exploring Fully Homomorphic Encryption
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
A Christmas Game
I’m going through a bit of a boardgame stint, as I usually do during christmas time. I had exactly...
over a year ago
I’m going through a bit of a boardgame stint, as I usually do during christmas time. I had exactly one thing on my wishlist for this christmas for my little brother: Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries. Guess what? I got something from my wishlist!
This was our 5th or 6th game (or...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 6 (End Sound)
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
8 months ago
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
Applied Cartography
Order, Tailwind, DRY
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating...
4 days ago
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating some higher-traffic, higher-leverage parts of Buttondown's admin UI away from the autogenerated Django admin and into some more bespoke components.
Take, for instance, this rather...
Good Enough
TIL: Merge nested attributes in Rails permit params
I am working on a new product that's a bit more complicated than our prior releases.
Getting...
a year ago
I am working on a new product that's a bit more complicated than our prior releases.
Getting refamiliarized with nested parameters in Rails has been interesting.
In this case imagine I have a discussion that, when creating it I also want to create the first comment.
The...
Applied Cartography
Against Against Innovation Tokens
Glyph (whose writing and contributions to the Python ecosystem I am deeply grateful for) wrote...
5 months ago
Glyph (whose writing and contributions to the Python ecosystem I am deeply grateful for) wrote Against Innovation Tokens yesterday:
In 2015, Dan McKinley laid out a model for software teams selecting technologies. He proposed that each team have a limited supply of “innovation...
./techtipsy
How I treat my urge to hoard data
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized...
over a year ago
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized that the pursuit to hoard all the things will just keep
on consuming more and more of my time and money. Storage is cheap up until to a
point, once you find yourself tracking hard...
Jonas Hietala
Regex substitution with unicode in Haskell
While remaking the site I noticed my automatic embedding of bare youtube links sometimes didn’t...
over a year ago
While remaking the site I noticed my automatic embedding of bare youtube links sometimes didn’t work. The culprit was unicode in the document which the regex library couldn’t handle.
Apparently while this would be supported by default by almost all modern languages it’s not the...
Willem's Blog
Why Apple Silicon is a big deal
Never have I been so blown away as by the new MacBook Air with M1 processor. It is a big deal.
over a year ago
Never have I been so blown away as by the new MacBook Air with M1 processor. It is a big deal.
Good Enough
TIL: Turbo Stream broadcasting needs default_url_options to be set
We've been using Turbo Streams in some of our recent prototypes, which makes it really easy and fun...
a year ago
We've been using Turbo Streams in some of our recent prototypes, which makes it really easy and fun to get responsive and fun interactions set up. However, we kept having issues with images sent in a turbo stream response.
If the response was delivered by a normal controller...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Quantum Software Systems Ltd's QNX
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
8 months ago
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
Applied Cartography
Notes on Zed
I was late to the VS Code zeitgeist, and as penitence I try to go out of my way to try new editors...
9 months ago
I was late to the VS Code zeitgeist, and as penitence I try to go out of my way to try new editors whenever I see them — which is why this morning I installed Zed, which makes its bones on performance (yay!) and teams functionality (irrelevant for my use cases, but seems...
Christian Selig
First on New Blog
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will...
a year ago
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will remove.
This goat’s name is apparently Gubgub, and very cute.
Ian's Blog
GitHub Notification Emails Hijacked to Send Malware
As an open source developer I frequently get emails from GitHub, most of these emails are...
3 months ago
As an open source developer I frequently get emails from GitHub, most of these emails are notifications sent on behalf of GitHub users to let me know that somebody has interacted with something and requires my attention. Perhaps somebody has created a new issue on one of my...
Good Enough
Season 3, Issue 3: Cosmic Maelstrom
1. Team Full
It's exciting times over here at Good Enough HQ!
(There is no Good Enough HQ. I'd say...
a year ago
1. Team Full
It's exciting times over here at Good Enough HQ!
(There is no Good Enough HQ. I'd say it's in the cloud, but even clouds are now looked down upon as dirtyish things that should not be enjoyed. And not because of air pollution per se, though perhaps because of...
Neil Madden
A few clarifications about CVE-2022-21449
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating...
over a year ago
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating around on Reddit/Twitter etc: The bug only impacts Java 15 and above. The original advisory from Oracle incorrectly listed earlier versions (like 7, 8 and 11) as being impacted....
Notes on software...
Generating a REST API from a database
I recently published an alpha version of a code generation tool,
DBCore, that reads a...
over a year ago
I recently published an alpha version of a code generation tool,
DBCore, that reads a database
schema from PostgreSQL or MySQL and generates an entire Go API with
CRUD operations, pagination, filtering, and authentication.
But more than just generating code like
xo/xo or...
Style over Substance
Our favorite places to eat and drinks during our Portugal vacation
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a...
7 months ago
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a short city trip a few years earlier, and that experience was so good we knew we had to return. This time, we decided to take a full three weeks and see the sights. We were...
Arduino Blog
How to customize your Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards on the go
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage...
a month ago
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage their IoT projects with ease. From tracking sensor data to automating smart devices, the cloud enables seamless connectivity. Complementing this, the Arduino IoT Remote mobile app...
Applied Cartography
Migrating someone who's on Stripe Connect Express
Most Stripe accounts on Substack are “Standard Connect”, which essentially means that:
the author...
11 months ago
Most Stripe accounts on Substack are “Standard Connect”, which essentially means that:
the author has full agency over their account and is the merchant of record;
they can revoke OAuth access from Substack (or whomever) at any time;
Substack continues to take that 10% as an...
watchTowr Labs -...
Check Point - Wrong Check Point (CVE-2024-24919)
Gather round, gather round - it’s time for another blogpost tearing open an SSLVPN appliance and...
6 months ago
Gather round, gather round - it’s time for another blogpost tearing open an SSLVPN appliance and laying bare a recent in-the-wild exploited bug. This time, it is Check Point who is the focus of our penetrative gaze.
Check Point, for those unaware, is the vendor responsible for...
Home on Erik...
Plotting author statistics for Git repos using Git of Theseus
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I...
over a year ago
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I have a couple of blog posts in the pipeline about various updates. First up, I made a number of fixes to Git of Theseus which is a tool (written in Python) that generates...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism
over a year ago
Good Enough
TIL: Victory Symbol
We noticed that the victory symbol at the bottom of our homepage looked different in Chrome than...
a year ago
We noticed that the victory symbol at the bottom of our homepage looked different in Chrome than Safari––it was playing smart and rendered the unicode character as an emoji. Lettini found a fix though! Append this string of code to the symbol: ︎.
So ✌︎ renders...
Azad's Blog
Apple Vision Pro—A Revolution for Home Video Formats
Apple has always been at the forefront of home video with Apple TV (the device), iTunes Movies,...
3 months ago
Apple has always been at the forefront of home video with Apple TV (the device), iTunes Movies, Spatial Audio, and the vivid displays of iPhones, iPads, and Mac displays. With Apple Vision Pro, Apple is once again pushing the boundaries of the movie watching experience by...
Jonas Hietala
Making a Game Again?
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my...
over a year ago
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my glasses-missing headaches and I’m going to Ikea and some other shops for, you guessed it, shopping! Sure it’s fun and sure I need to do these things but the only thing on my mind now is...
Home on Erik...
Calculating cosine similarities using dimensionality reduction
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity...
over a year ago
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity Computation (DISCO)
I just glanced at the paper, and there's some cool stuff going on from a theoretical perspective. What I'm curious about is why they didn't decide to use...
Home on Erik...
Slides from NYC Machine Learning talk
Slides from the talk. Slightly edited because (a) some of the slides make little sense taken out of...
over a year ago
Slides from the talk. Slightly edited because (a) some of the slides make little sense taken out of context (b) Slideshare seem to have problem converting some of the stuff.
Collaborative filtering at Spotify from Erik Bernhardsson
Louwrentius
Installation of ZFS on Linux hangs on Debian Wheezy
This article is no longer relevant.
After a fresh net-install of Debian Wheezy, I was unable to...
over a year ago
This article is no longer relevant.
After a fresh net-install of Debian Wheezy, I was unable to compile the ZFS for Linux kernel module. I've installed apt-get install build-essential but that wasn't enough.
The apt-get install debian-zfs command would just hang.
I noticed a...
Arduino Blog
This unique wall sconce welcomes you home with warm light
Have you ever walked through your front door after a long day of work and realized that your home...
a week ago
Have you ever walked through your front door after a long day of work and realized that your home just isn’t as inviting as it seems like it should be? While it may not work miracles, some nice and welcoming lighting can make a big difference. That’s why Lauren Palazzi made this...
Notes on software...
A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability
A database does not need a write-ahead log (WAL) to achieve
durability. A database can write its...
5 months ago
A database does not need a write-ahead log (WAL) to achieve
durability. A database can write its long-term data structure durably
to disk before returning to a client. Granted, this is a bad idea! And
granted, a WAL is critical for durability by design in most
databases. But I...
Applied Cartography
Hypermodern Django
I've been on the hunt for a new way to dogfood Buttondown for the past month or so, and I've finally...
a week ago
I've been on the hunt for a new way to dogfood Buttondown for the past month or so, and I've finally found it: Hypermodern Django.
At this point, all of my/our usages of Buttondown for Buttondown don't involve archives: we're using it headlessly, with RSS-to-email and APIs...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell
4 months ago
Bryan Braun - Blog
Goodbye Evernote, Hello Obsidian
I use note-taking software every day. I use it for journaling, blogging, capturing ideas,...
6 months ago
I use note-taking software every day. I use it for journaling, blogging, capturing ideas, researching technologies, managing my projects, and many other things. Writing is how I think through problems, and note-taking software makes all that thinking easy to search and...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 22 Timelapse
Here’s the timelapse for my entry to Ludum Dare 22,...
over a year ago
Here’s the timelapse for my entry to Ludum Dare 22, Sat-E.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoKDyhxCVm0
This time I managed to record one screen every minute, which is very suboptimal to say the least but I slowed it down a bit so you can at least see something being done there.
Arduino Blog
A new Plug and Make Kit challenge! A game of rhythm and creativity
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about unleashing creativity while simplifying the process of...
a week ago
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about unleashing creativity while simplifying the process of turning ideas into reality. It enables everyone to focus on the fun of creating with the power of the UNO R4 WiFi and a user-friendly, modular design – bypassing the complexities of...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Blockchain for beginners
Introduction This is a guide for developers who kinda sorta know what blockchains are for (making...
over a year ago
Introduction This is a guide for developers who kinda sorta know what blockchains are for (making distributed crypto-currencies like Bitcoin…
Jonas Hietala
Minor site updates
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started...
over a year ago
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started looking at moving to Pygments as my highlighter. With some searching around I found a blog post about just that! That’s lucky because while I like Haskell, I’ve never really grocked it...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Convex and Concave Dispositions
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Improve your sleep by blocking light
I have been wearing a sleep mask in bed, blocking all light. It has been amazing for my sleep's...
over a year ago
I have been wearing a sleep mask in bed, blocking all light. It has been amazing for my sleep's quality. Read along for my findings!
Jonas Hietala
Game Design Analysis: World of Goo
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing the game World of Goo a bit.
The first level
The game is very simple. You begin with a structure and a few Goo balls, the charming balls bobbing around there, which you can drag...
Good Enough
Actual Customer Support Is Remarkable
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built...
a year ago
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built software on the Internet and in the app stores.
Our motivation with Good Enough is to try to put together a few products that feel just right to the folks using them.
The things we...
Willem's Blog
Using a budget Android as main smartphone
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive...
over a year ago
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive iPhone.
Posts on Made of...
What's with ML software and pickles?
I have spent many years as an software engineer who was a total outsider to machine-learning, but...
a year ago
I have spent many years as an software engineer who was a total outsider to machine-learning, but with some curiosity and occasional peripheral interactions with it. During this time, a recurring theme for me was horror (and, to be honest, disdain) every time I encountered the...
Posts on Made of...
Some Android reverse-engineering tools
I’ve spent a lot of time this last week staring at decompiled Dalvik assembly. In the process, I...
over a year ago
I’ve spent a lot of time this last week staring at decompiled Dalvik assembly. In the process, I created a couple of useful tools that I figure are worth sharing.
I’ve been using dedexer instead of baksmali, honestly mainly because the former’s output has fewer blank lines and so...
Gwern.net Newsletter
September 2020 News
September 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DRL and AI scaling, psychiatric disorders; no...
over a year ago
September 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DRL and AI scaling, psychiatric disorders; no reviews.
computers are bad
2023-05-07 electrical characteristics of telephone lines
Let's take a break from our boring topic of regional history to focus instead
on an even more boring...
a year ago
Let's take a break from our boring topic of regional history to focus instead
on an even more boring topic: implementation details of telephone lines.
The conventional "copper pair" analog telephone line is fading away. The FCC
has begun to authorize abandonment of copper outside...
Louwrentius
Migration from blogger to blogofile and disqus is complete
As stated in my previous post, I migrated all posts from blogger.com to my own host running...
over a year ago
As stated in my previous post, I migrated all posts from blogger.com to my own host running blogofile.
At the time of my previous post, I was not able to restore all comments made on my old blog. Thanks to some help
from disqcus I fixed an error on my behalf and all old comments...
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Changing a process's controlling terminal
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal,...
over a year ago
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal, and transplants it to a new terminal. reptyr comes from a proud family of similar hacks, and works in the same basic way: We use ptrace(2) to attach to a target process and force...
Applied Cartography
November, 2024
Not a lot to share this month; it was a particularly busy time, between a mystery (and now solved,...
2 weeks ago
Not a lot to share this month; it was a particularly busy time, between a mystery (and now solved, without fanfare or closure) cough and a dearth of time to write as I started to explore easing back into full-time work.
Still, some writing (and selfishly, I'm excited to end the...
Louwrentius
Why VMware vSphere replication is changing the game
If you are running a serious VMware environment, chances are you do have a SAN. Often with smaller...
over a year ago
If you are running a serious VMware environment, chances are you do have a SAN. Often with smaller setups, many people do employ multiple VMware hosts, but the SAN is a single point of failure.
SANs are often fully redundant devices, with redundant PSUs, storage controllers,...
./techtipsy
What changing the CPU on a laptop looks like
This post illustrates something that is not common on modern laptops:
changing the...
over a year ago
This post illustrates something that is not common on modern laptops:
changing the CPU.
Background
One of the modifications that you can do to a ThinkPad T430 laptop is changing
the CPU to a more powerful quad core model. That’s exactly what I did back in 2017,
but due to the...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Halo and more: exploring incremental verification and SNARKs without pairings
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Assess your aquarium’s health with an AI-enabled ultrasonic sensor
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can...
7 months ago
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can accumulate, which leads to a loss in fish and plant populations if not fixed quickly. But because most water testing, especially in aquariums, is done primarily on the surface, vital...
Birchtree
My favorite (and least favorite) movies of 2024
I’ve watched 48 new release movies in 2024, and with just a few weeks left in the year, I wanted to...
a week ago
I’ve watched 48 new release movies in 2024, and with just a few weeks left in the year, I wanted to make what is my current top 10 (plus honorable mentions & worst movies). As we get to the end of the year and you might have some
Style over Substance
Review of the 2-dial TTArtisan Light Meter
My latest purchase for my analog cameras is the TTArtisan light meter, a hotshoe-mounted meter...
over a year ago
My latest purchase for my analog cameras is the TTArtisan light meter, a hotshoe-mounted meter accessory. The market for these shoe-mounted light meters for vintage cameras has become weirdly competitive. They fit on top of a mechanical camera and provide you with the right...
Jonas Hietala
Back to lazy.nvim
Around a month ago I had an affair with rocks.nvim.
It was fun, but I’m back together with lazy.nvim...
6 months ago
Around a month ago I had an affair with rocks.nvim.
It was fun, but I’m back together with lazy.nvim again.
This is a short post to explain why—at this point in time—the grass wasn’t greener on the other side.
Problems with rocks.nvim
Too many weird issues.
I had quite a few...
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
./techtipsy
The absolute state of Bluetooth audio in 2022
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. They’re good for consuming content.
Audio calls with your...
over a year ago
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. They’re good for consuming content.
Audio calls with your colleagues? Forget about it.
This is the setup I have to go with, and it has all to do with how Bluetooth
works. Your options with Bluetooth headsets are the following:
high quality...
Applied Cartography
Typesafe routes in Vue
I watched Gary Bernhardt's talk on static routing back a few years ago and — I'm not sure if I would...
6 months ago
I watched Gary Bernhardt's talk on static routing back a few years ago and — I'm not sure if I would call it formative, but it stuck in my craw as a platonic ideal of sorts, as something I couldn't really justify adopting within Buttondown but really wanted.
I built out and...
Jonas Hietala
A Geek Valentine
Yes! I made it! It’s 22:22 on the very last day of February and I’ve been programming virtually...
over a year ago
Yes! I made it! It’s 22:22 on the very last day of February and I’ve been programming virtually non-stop for the past two days, my brain feels like mashed potatoes.
A Geek Valentine
Controls
Use spacebar to:
Build the time machine
Buy and place traps (Just face an empty square...
Old Vintage...
Composite and hard reset mods for the Tandyvision One
I still have my literal first home computer (the Tomy Tutor), and it so happens I also have my...
2 weeks ago
I still have my literal first home computer (the Tomy Tutor), and it so happens I also have my literal first game console: the Tandyvision One, Tandy Radio Shack's label variant of the Mattel Intellivision Master Component.
The Mattel Intellivision proper originally hails...
Willem's Blog
Something the smartwatch will never have: patina
Patina is often neglected when comparing smartwatches with regular watches.
over a year ago
Patina is often neglected when comparing smartwatches with regular watches.
Construction Physics
Why the U.S. Can’t Build Icebreaking Ships
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post,...
2 months ago
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post, especially those who shared their own stories of loss.
Willem's Blog
Rescuing files from a broken harddisk
Yesterday I helped a young woman with her broken computer containing precious photos, could I safe...
over a year ago
Yesterday I helped a young woman with her broken computer containing precious photos, could I safe them?
Louwrentius
An ode to the 10,000 RPM Western Digital (Veloci)Raptor
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at...
over a year ago
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at the Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam. I was there to buy a Western Digital Raptor model WD740, with 74 GB of capacity, running at 10,000 RPM.
When I bought this drive, we were still in...
Matt Mullenweg
WPAI
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some...
a week ago
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some very cool products including CodeWP, AgentWP, and WP.chat.
Notes on software...
Interpreting TypeScript
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript...
over a year ago
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript makes much of its functionality
available programmatically. In this post we'll use the TypeScript
compiler API to build an interpreter. We'll build off of a...
Home on Erik...
Modeling conversion rates using Weibull and gamma distributions
This is a blog post originally featured on the Better engineering blog. If you want to link to this...
over a year ago
This is a blog post originally featured on the Better engineering blog. If you want to link to this article or share it, please go to the original post URL! Separately, I'm sorry it's been so long with no posts on this blog.
Home on Erik...
Miscellaneous unsolicited (and possibly biased) career advice
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of...
over a year ago
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of mistakes and luck so I thought I'd share some.
Honestly, I feel like I've mostly benefitted from luck.
Willem's Blog
Understanding the security concerns in shared hosting
People pay me to hack them, provided I'll explain how I did it. Read along to learn how hackers use...
over a year ago
People pay me to hack them, provided I'll explain how I did it. Read along to learn how hackers use security holes to hack your app, webshop or website!
Electronics etc…
Installing Linux GPIB Drivers for the Agilent 82357B
Introduction
Other Installation Instructions
Agilent 82357B Initialization Process
Installing the...
a year ago
Introduction
Other Installation Instructions
Agilent 82357B Initialization Process
Installing the Agilent 82357B GPIB Driver on an Ubuntu Linux Distribution
References
Introduction
I’ve started to grow a collection of older test equipment from the eighties, the
nineties, and the...
Gwern.net Newsletter
March 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
over a year ago
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
Matt Mullenweg
Carmack & Rogan
I guess something has changed with the Joe Rogan / Spotify deal and now all the old episodes are on...
3 weeks ago
I guess something has changed with the Joe Rogan / Spotify deal and now all the old episodes are on YouTube again, which means the gems from the archives can now pop up. I was alerted to this conversation between Joe Rogan and John Carmack, and it’s pure gold. I know I’m five...
Home on Erik...
How to hire smarter than the market: a toy model
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable....
over a year ago
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable. It's not very important what those are, so let's just call them “thing A” and “thing B” for now.
./techtipsy
DIY cloud gaming setup with VFIO, Parsec and AMD
This is a follow-up to my previous post where I covered
the VFIO setup in general. For many people...
over a year ago
This is a follow-up to my previous post where I covered
the VFIO setup in general. For many people that would have been good enough, but my goal with this setup was to have a
powerful gaming setup that I could access from my living room PC with 20 meters of Ethernet cables...
Good Enough
TIL: System Colors are supported in CSS, but they’re unreliable
I’ve said this before: We’re primarily a web shop here at Good Enough, but occasionally we come up...
a year ago
I’ve said this before: We’re primarily a web shop here at Good Enough, but occasionally we come up with ideas that we think would work really well as a native desktop or mobile application. Still, we prototype those ideas on the web first.
Recently, I wanted to try and make one...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
The Serendipity Machine
Notes on Using Twitter
11 months ago
Gwern.net Newsletter
April 2020 gwern.net newsletter
This is the April 2020 edition of the gwern.net newsletter; previous, March 2020 (archives).
over a year ago
This is the April 2020 edition of the gwern.net newsletter; previous, March 2020 (archives).
latest projects -...
Badge
[Hardware] A RISC-V LED matrix
a year ago
[Hardware] A RISC-V LED matrix
Applied Cartography
Content debt
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis,...
5 months ago
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis, handbooks, etc.) to the public as a bit of a marketing push. This is essentially a form of debt, to the extent that you’re taking a lump-sum payment now in exchange for the implicit cost...
Electronics etc…
Tesla’s FSD - First and Last Impressions
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo.
Introduction
Rules of Engagement
Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach...
7 months ago
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo.
Introduction
Rules of Engagement
Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach to Truckee (11 miles)
Test Ride 2: I-80 from Truckee to Blue Canyon (36 miles)
Test Ride 3: from West-Valley College to I-85 Entrance (1 mile)
Conclusion
Introduction
In the past...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Revenue-Evil Curve: a different way to think about prioritizing public goods funding
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
The hardest challenge about becoming a manager
Note: this post is full of pseudo-psychology and highly speculative content. Like most fun stuff!
I...
over a year ago
Note: this post is full of pseudo-psychology and highly speculative content. Like most fun stuff!
I became a manager back in 2009. Being a developer is fun. You have this very tangible way to measure yourself.
Notes on software...
Deploying FreeBSD on Linode unattended in minutes
I became a FreeBSD user over 2 years ago when I wanted to see what all
the fuss was about. I swapped...
over a year ago
I became a FreeBSD user over 2 years ago when I wanted to see what all
the fuss was about. I swapped my y410p dual-booting Windows / Ubuntu
with FreeBSD running Gnome 3. I learned a lot during the transition
and came to appreciate FreeBSD as a user. I soon began running...
Notes on software...
Finding memory leaks in Postgres C code
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
9 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Posts on Made of...
Using X forwarding with screen by proxying $DISPLAY
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to explain why I love GNU screen. I can keep a...
over a year ago
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to explain why I love GNU screen. I can keep a long-running session going on a server somewhere, and log in and resume my session without losing any state.
I also love X-forwarding. I love being able to log into a remote server...
Jonas Hietala
Hearthstone on Wine
I like Hearthstone and recently the next expansion Goblins vs Gnomes so I wanted to install and play...
over a year ago
I like Hearthstone and recently the next expansion Goblins vs Gnomes so I wanted to install and play it. It didn’t work in vanilla wine, with a “time out error”, but I found a bug report which makes it work. Here’s a short summary:
Get wine source from git. My version was...
Applied Cartography
October, 2024
Hello! Lots of writing in October (what early parenthood takes away in terms of deep flow, it gives...
a month ago
Hello! Lots of writing in October (what early parenthood takes away in terms of deep flow, it gives back in terms of twenty-minute pockets of time and thought):
On the content front, I wrote about Monster Sanctuary (a delightful JRPG), The Anderson Tapes (a solid late-period Sean...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering standard cell logic in the Intel 386 processor
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000...
10 months ago
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000 transistors.
Intel had scheduled 50 person-years to design the processor, but it was falling behind schedule.
The design team decided to automate chunks of the layout, developing "automatic...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Against overuse of the Gini coefficient
over a year ago
Style over Substance
Shooting the Ligero 3D-printed Mamiya Press camera by MaxWanderlush
Last year I started shooting my first 3D-printed camera, a Goodman Zone. It was soon followed by the...
over a year ago
Last year I started shooting my first 3D-printed camera, a Goodman Zone. It was soon followed by the panoramic pinhole Goodman Scura and the MPWide, a modified Fuji Instax Wide 300. The MPWide is a mod by the talented Mario, otherwise known as MaxWanderlush. He has been releasing...
Louwrentius
HP Proliant Microserver N40L is a great NAS or Router
Update 2012-12-11: It seems that a new and faster version is on the horizon.
Update 2012-12-21:...
over a year ago
Update 2012-12-11: It seems that a new and faster version is on the horizon.
Update 2012-12-21: Yes, the new model G7 N54L is out.
Some products seem almost too good to be true and I think the HP Proliant Microserver N40L is one of them. If you are into the market for a very...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
MCTS and LLMs: what's the big deal?
Everyone on the internet is recently very excited about large language models and Monte Carlo tree...
6 months ago
Everyone on the internet is recently very excited about large language models and Monte Carlo tree search. Going back months, the “Q*” leak…
Willem's Blog
Building a professional 72TB NAS
This month I installed a professional HPE ProLiant DL380p server in a datacenter in Amsterdam, read...
over a year ago
This month I installed a professional HPE ProLiant DL380p server in a datacenter in Amsterdam, read this post to see how this was done!
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – epilogue – curse of dimensionality
This is another post based on my talk at NYC Machine Learning. The previous two parts covered most...
over a year ago
This is another post based on my talk at NYC Machine Learning. The previous two parts covered most of the interesting parts, but there are still some topics left to be discussed. To go back and read the meaty stuff, check out
computers are bad
2023-12-23 ITT Technical Institute
Programming note/shameless plug: I am finally on Mastodon.
The history of the telephone industry is...
a year ago
Programming note/shameless plug: I am finally on Mastodon.
The history of the telephone industry is a bit of an odd one. For the greatest
part of the 20th century, telephony in the United States was largely a monopoly
of AT&T and its many affiliates. This wasn't always the case,...
Louwrentius
Achieving 2.3 GB/s with 16 x 4 TB drives
I'm in the process of building a new storage server to replace my 18 TB NAS.
The server is almost...
over a year ago
I'm in the process of building a new storage server to replace my 18 TB NAS.
The server is almost finished, it's now down to adding disk drives. I'm using the HGST 4 TB 7200 RPM drive for this build (SKU 0S03356) (review).
I have not bought all drives at once, but slowly adding...
Willem's Blog
Clouds below my floor
Building a little datacenter in my basement utilising a very fast internet connection.
over a year ago
Building a little datacenter in my basement utilising a very fast internet connection.
Matt Blewitt
Long Distance Relationships
I’ve been managing a fully remote, fully distributed team, covering timezones from UTC-8 through...
2 months ago
I’ve been managing a fully remote, fully distributed team, covering timezones from UTC-8 through UTC+10, for the last couple of years. Through that time, I’ve learned a lot on organising work, interpersonal relationships, and ultimately how to overcome a lack of promximity to my...
Jonas Hietala
HandCash handles require trust and are insecure
The HandCash wallet has recently become a popular Bitcoin Cash wallet in large part thanks to their...
over a year ago
The HandCash wallet has recently become a popular Bitcoin Cash wallet in large part thanks to their $handle concept. It’s basically a username you use instead of the normal Bitcoin Cash address, similar to how domain names abstract away IP addresses. For example instead of...
Willem's Blog
Optical vs chest strap heart rate monitors
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness...
over a year ago
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness trackers
Abort Retry Fail
The History of OS/2
Getting a Divorce
a year ago
Willem's Blog
Wearing Grand Seiko
I am glad I took the opportunity to wear a Grand Seiko, learning first hand about its craftsmanship,...
over a year ago
I am glad I took the opportunity to wear a Grand Seiko, learning first hand about its craftsmanship, innovation and practicality.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows NT 3.1
A Highly Portable Future
a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Optimism retro funding round 1
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Tablet as main computer
I have been using a tablet as my main computer for quite some time now. In this blog post I share...
over a year ago
I have been using a tablet as my main computer for quite some time now. In this blog post I share you my experience on using Surface Pro and iPad Pro to get my work done.
Home on Erik...
Annoy
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm...
over a year ago
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm not trying to compete with existing packages, but Annoy has a couple of features that makes it pretty useful.
Arduino Blog
A DIY weather display with dedicated outdoor sensor station
Weather stations are popular projects in the maker community because they’re useful and usually...
6 months ago
Weather stations are popular projects in the maker community because they’re useful and usually quite affordable to construct. But most that we see are really weather information displays that gather data through the internet from stations in the region. That data is fairly...
Good Enough
Yes, Facebook Is Terrible, but Also…
I’m not on Facebook.
It was eight or ten years ago when I left for good.
While there were some good...
a year ago
I’m not on Facebook.
It was eight or ten years ago when I left for good.
While there were some good and useful interactions, the algorithm brought me down, I didn’t have a lot of desire to keep up with old acquaintances, and hearing everyone’s political stance was not good for...
./techtipsy
Your Wi-Fi might be terrible because of Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS)
For a few months, I had issues with my Wi-Fi network. The 2.4 GHz network would be fine, but the 5...
a month ago
For a few months, I had issues with my Wi-Fi network. The 2.4 GHz network would be fine, but the 5 GHz one would
suddenly stop working and completely disappear from the available Wi-Fi networks. OpenWRT upgrades also didn’t improve
the situation. This was very annoying.
After...
Louwrentius
8 TB RAID 6 Linux software RAID using EXT4
Mobo: Asus P5Q-EM DO ( 6x sata)
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7400
RAM: 4 GB
Controller; HighPoint RocketRAID...
over a year ago
Mobo: Asus P5Q-EM DO ( 6x sata)
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7400
RAM: 4 GB
Controller; HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 (16x poorten)
PSU: CooMas Silent Pro M 600W ATX2 (definitely not overkill)
HD: Samsung 1 TB SAT2 HD103UJ (10x)
OS: Debian Lenny with custom kernel (backported)
FS: EXT4
RAID...
Arduino Blog
This rolling ball game brings Skee-Ball-style fun from the arcade to your home
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be...
5 months ago
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be Skee-Ball. But while many other popular arcade games have viable at-home alternatives, Skee-Ball doesn’t — at least not unless you’re willing to spend a serious amount of money....
computers are bad
2023-06-07 something up there - nasa and uaps
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I...
a year ago
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I am
not addressing the recent claims by David Grusch. This is for a couple of
reasons. First, I am skeptical of Grusch. He is not the first seemingly
well-positioned former...
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Drawing
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a...
over a year ago
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a time, so now I’m going to try something new here. In the beginning of every week I’ll declare something I’ll be focusing on and then that’s the only thing I should focus on on my...
csvbase blog
You can't just assume UTF-8
How to infer character encodings with statistics
7 months ago
How to infer character encodings with statistics
Louwrentius
1.0 GB/s using Linux software RAID
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I...
over a year ago
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I immediately performed some initial tests with software RAID 0. The results
are just astounding.
debian:~# dd if=/dev/md0 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=50000
50000+0 records in
50000+0...
Home on Erik...
Buffet lines are terrible, but let's try to improve them using computer simulations
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives....
over a year ago
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives. I've suspected for years that the “classic” buffet line system is a deeply flawed and inefficient method, and every time I'm stuck in the line has made me more convinced.
Applied Cartography
Linear
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes...
5 days ago
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes I wanted to publish on our own experience of migrating from GitHub Issues to Linear, and some reflections on it as a product now that we've been using it for a few months.
One...
Louwrentius
Getting the Sitecom AC600 Wi-Fi adapter running on Linux
TL;DR Yes it works with some modifications of the driver source.
A USB Wi-Fi adapter I used with a...
over a year ago
TL;DR Yes it works with some modifications of the driver source.
A USB Wi-Fi adapter I used with a Raspberry Pi broke as I dropped it on the floor, so I had to replace it. I just went to a local shop and bought the Sitecom AC600 adapter as that's what they had available (with...
Willem's Blog
My first weeks as dad
Last Christmas my wife gave birth of our son. It's a life changing experience to become a parent....
over a year ago
Last Christmas my wife gave birth of our son. It's a life changing experience to become a parent. Read along for my (biometric) findings and some practical tips.
Louwrentius
Speeding up Linux MDADM RAID array rebuild time using bitmaps
Update 2020: Please beware of the impact of random write I/O performance.
Please note that with a...
over a year ago
Update 2020: Please beware of the impact of random write I/O performance.
Please note that with a modern Linux distribution, bitmaps are enabled by default. They will not help speed up a rebuild after a failed drive. But it will help resync an array that got out-of-sync due to...
Arduino Blog
ThermoGrasp brings thermal feedback to virtual reality
Imagine playing Half-Life: Alyx and feeling the gun heat up in your hand as you take down The...
2 months ago
Imagine playing Half-Life: Alyx and feeling the gun heat up in your hand as you take down The Combine. Or operating a robot through augmented reality and feeling coldness on your fingers when you get close to exceeding the robot’s limits. A prototype device called ThermoGrasp...
Jonas Hietala
Reinstalling Slackware
So I reinstalled slackware on my machine and decided to take some rough notes of the most important...
over a year ago
So I reinstalled slackware on my machine and decided to take some rough notes of the most important steps I made. I did not document the steps in detail, and some are very specific for my setup. But maybe it can be useful for someone, or myself.
Basic steps
Make slackware usb...
Simply Explained
Why I don't take sponsorships
Last year I made that video in response to a sponsorship offer that I got from various VPN...
over a year ago
Last year I made that video in response to a sponsorship offer that I got from various VPN providers. They all told me the same thing: our service is the best way to protect your privacy, and we were hoping you could convey this message in one of your videos.So I decided to do...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing over multinomial distributions
Sometimes you have to maximize some function $$ f(w_1, w_2, ldots, w_n) $$ where $$ w_1 + w_2 +...
over a year ago
Sometimes you have to maximize some function $$ f(w_1, w_2, ldots, w_n) $$ where $$ w_1 + w_2 + ldots + w_n = 1 $$ and $$ 0 le w_i le 1 $$ . Usually, $$ f $$ is concave and differentiable, so there's one unique global maximum and you can solve it by applying gradient ascent.
Notes on software...
What's the big deal about Deterministic Simulation Testing?
Bugs in distributed systems are hard to find, largely because systems
interact in chaotic ways. And...
4 months ago
Bugs in distributed systems are hard to find, largely because systems
interact in chaotic ways. And even once you've found a bug, it can be
anywhere from simple to impossible to reproduce it. It's about as far
away as you can get from the ideal test environment: property...
Willem's Blog
Migrating to the Cloud
Helping a customer clear its on-premise data room and migrate to the cloud: an adventure full of...
over a year ago
Helping a customer clear its on-premise data room and migrate to the cloud: an adventure full of cables, cabinets and bandwidth!
csvbase blog
Being on The Semantic Web is easy, and, frankly, well worth the bother
Web 3.0 was not about the blockchain, thank god
4 months ago
Web 3.0 was not about the blockchain, thank god
Ian's Blog
Pragmatically Generating a Self-Signed Certificate and Private Key using OpenSSL
Recently I found myself needing to generate a HTTPS Server Certificate and Private Key for an iOS...
over a year ago
Recently I found myself needing to generate a HTTPS Server Certificate and Private Key for an iOS app using OpenSSL, what surprised me was the total lack of documentation for OpenSSL.
While there is plenty of function documentation, what OpenSSL really lacks is examples of how it...
latest projects -...
Portable Probability Panel
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
5 months ago
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
Louwrentius
This blog is now running on solar power
Introduction
This blog is now running on solar power.
I've put a solar panel on my balcony, which...
over a year ago
Introduction
This blog is now running on solar power.
I've put a solar panel on my balcony, which is connected to a solar charge controller. This device charges an old worn-out car battery and provides power to a Raspberry Pi ~~3b+~~ 4B, which in turn powers this (static)...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Interesting double-poly latches inside AMD's vintage LANCE Ethernet chip
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an...
11 months ago
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an Ethernet chip from 1982 had something new: a strange layer of yellow wiring on the die.
After some study, I learned that the yellow wiring is a second layer of resistive polysilicon,...
Willem's Blog
Helping people with free software
This week I helped a man with repairing and reinstalling his computer with Debian GNU/Linux.
over a year ago
This week I helped a man with repairing and reinstalling his computer with Debian GNU/Linux.
Posts on Made of...
A Cursed Bug
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language...
over a year ago
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language models. One of the joys of using a lot of computing resources, especially on somewhat niche software stacks, is that you spend a lot of time running into the long-tail of bugs which...
Willem's Blog
Half Marathon
Discover my journey from noob to (half) marathon finisher and how I balanced data with fitness -...
9 months ago
Discover my journey from noob to (half) marathon finisher and how I balanced data with fitness - read about my experiences!
./techtipsy
Things I've learned during my self-hosting adventure
This is a list of lessons that I’ve learned while playing around with my computer setup during the...
over a year ago
This is a list of lessons that I’ve learned while playing around with my computer setup during the last 6-7 years or so.
USB connected storage is a bad idea when you are using BTRFS.
USB connected storage is still a bad idea when you are using ZFS, but it is at least much more...
Jonas Hietala
Writing Home Assistant automations using Genservers in Elixir
I’ve been a fan of Home Assistant a while now;
it’s a great platform for home automation with its...
2 months ago
I’ve been a fan of Home Assistant a while now;
it’s a great platform for home automation with its beginner friendly and feature rich UI,
support for a ton of different devices and integrations,
and there’s a bunch of ways to create automations.
But there’s no engine for writing...
Old Vintage...
Finally, an MOS 7600/7601 Video Game Array data sheet
A quick one. Many of you are aware of my rather abnormal fascination with the MOS 7600/7601, MOS...
a year ago
A quick one. Many of you are aware of my rather abnormal fascination with the MOS 7600/7601, MOS Technology's dedicated "Pong-on-a-chip" (from the company that brought you my favourite CPU, the MOS 6502) that's actually a rather sophisticated microcontroller for the era. I own...
Jonas Hietala
Dbot
So I made a small irc bot in 294 characters in code-golfing language #1: Perl.
Usage
perl...
over a year ago
So I made a small irc bot in 294 characters in code-golfing language #1: Perl.
Usage
perl Dbot
Commands
.name - Echo the bots name
.hello - Output “hello world!”
.src - Dump the source code
Code
use IO::Socket;$s=IO::Socket::INET->new("158.38.8.251:6667");sub o{print$s...
Willem's Blog
Rescuing photos from a crashed iMac
This week I attempted to recover two decades of personal photo history from a crashed iMac.
over a year ago
This week I attempted to recover two decades of personal photo history from a crashed iMac.
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON parser
Writing a JSON parser is one of the easiest ways to get familiar with
parsing techniques. The format...
over a year ago
Writing a JSON parser is one of the easiest ways to get familiar with
parsing techniques. The format is extremely simple. It's defined
recursively so you get a slight challenge compared to, say, parsing
Brainfuck; and you probably
already use JSON. Aside from that last point,...
Louwrentius
Why I do not use ZFS as a file system for my NAS
Many people have asked me why I do not use ZFS for my NAS storage box. This is a good question and I...
over a year ago
Many people have asked me why I do not use ZFS for my NAS storage box. This is a good question and I have multpile reasons why I do not use ZFS and probably never will.
** A lot has changed since this article was first published. I do now recommend using ZFS. I've also based my...
Home on Erik...
We are still early with the cloud: why software development is overdue for a change
This is is in many respects a successor to a blog post I wrote last year about what I want from...
over a year ago
This is is in many respects a successor to a blog post I wrote last year about what I want from software infrastructure, but the ideas morphed in my head into something sort of wider.
Applied Cartography
Using Cursor to port Django tests to pytest
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using...
3 months ago
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using these tools (Supermaven is a pretty heavy part of my day-to-day work), but have found most tools quite bad by the metric of "do they make me more productive on Buttondown's code...
Old Vintage...
So long, Z80
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s...
8 months ago
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s (PDF), announcing earlier this week that after June 14th you won't be able to buy them anymore (specifically the last-part-standing Z84C00 which comes in various speeds from 6-20 MHz)...
./techtipsy
I've reached the self-hosting endgame
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim...
over a year ago
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim to my imagination and completely changed my self-hosting setup. Again.
Here it is, in all its glory:
Well, at least that’s what’s on the table.
This machine is a true all-in-one:...
Home on Erik...
HubSpot's Picture Shows how to Maintain Monocultures in the 21st Century
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome...
over a year ago
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome Presentation Shows how to Create a 21st Century Culture”.
Just FYI: You're not different. You're a bunch of white hipsters aged 25-30 dressed up in the same theme.
Willem's Blog
Building the blog... in style!
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
over a year ago
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
Willem's Blog
Replacing a Shimano shift cable
After some adventure with our cargo bike, the Shimano Nexus 7-speed shifter cable got damaged and...
over a year ago
After some adventure with our cargo bike, the Shimano Nexus 7-speed shifter cable got damaged and needed replacement. Read my blog post to learn how to do this yourself.
Electronics etc…
Hideo Okawara’s Mixed Signal Lecture Series
Introduction
Hideo Okawara’s Mixed Signal Lecture Series
Frequency/Phase Movement Analysis by...
11 months ago
Introduction
Hideo Okawara’s Mixed Signal Lecture Series
Frequency/Phase Movement Analysis by Orthogonal Demodulation
Misc
Introduction
While researching a DSP related topic, Google dug up an excellent article,
written by Hideo Okawara, that is just one part of a series of ~53. I...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Balls
So it’s been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven’t made one...
over a year ago
So it’s been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven’t made one single game?! Well now I’m not counting the visual basic nightmare mastermind I made a long time ago but a real game. Whatever that means. I’ve had these monster-projects;
Point...
Applied Cartography
Gosling’s Old Rum
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from...
10 months ago
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from [REDACTED], a site on which I am very prone to judging a book by its cover; every month I'll end up purchasing a bottle of something purely because it looks interesting and I can...
Arduino Blog
This 3D-printed robotic arm can be built with just a few inexpensive components
Robotics is already an intimidating field, thanks to the complexity involved. And the cost of parts,...
2 months ago
Robotics is already an intimidating field, thanks to the complexity involved. And the cost of parts, such as actuators, only increases that feeling of inaccessibility. But as FABRI Creator shows in their most recent video, you can build a useful robotic arm with just a handful of...
Louwrentius
My experiences with DFS replication on Windows 2008 R2
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS...
over a year ago
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS replication has been massively improved. It supports larger data sets and performance has dramatically been improved over Windows 2008 R2.
I've implemented DFS replication to keep two...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Why some engineers get trusted with high-impact work
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go...
20 hours ago
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go around. Worse still, the chances to work on…
Arduino Blog
This DIY guitar transmitter sends digital audio to the amp
When on stage, most guitarists will simply run a long cable from their guitar to the amp or mixer....
4 months ago
When on stage, most guitarists will simply run a long cable from their guitar to the amp or mixer. But that cable can become tangled or get in the way, which is a problem for some of the more animated musicians out there. Wireless transmitters exist for them to express themselves...
Home on Erik...
More Luigi!
Continuing in the same spirit of shameless self-promotion, here's some recent Luigi press:
Reddit...
over a year ago
Continuing in the same spirit of shameless self-promotion, here's some recent Luigi press:
Reddit thread A Guide to Python Frameworks for Hadoop (slides from the NYC Hadoop User Group) This presentation from the Open Analytics NYC meetup about how Foursquare uses Luigi Luigi...
lcamtuf’s thing
Dispatches from the farm upstate
Middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.
4 months ago
Middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.
Matt Mullenweg
Observer Article
Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writes for the Observer, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg Is ‘More...
a month ago
Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writes for the Observer, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg Is ‘More Energized’ Than Ever Amid WP Engine Battle.
Arduino Blog
Discover #Virgil: history comes to life with Arduino
We’re excited to introduce #Virgil, an innovative project that combines the power of Arduino...
2 months ago
We’re excited to introduce #Virgil, an innovative project that combines the power of Arduino technology with a passion for history, creating a groundbreaking interactive experience for museums. Using Arduino’s versatile and scalable ecosystem, #Virgil operates completely...
Home on Erik...
Approximate nearest news
As you may know, one of my (very geeky) interests is Approximate nearest neigbor methods, and I'm...
over a year ago
As you may know, one of my (very geeky) interests is Approximate nearest neigbor methods, and I'm the author of a Python package called Annoy.
I've also built a benchmark suite called ann-benchmarks to compare different packages.
Construction Physics
Energy Cheat Sheet
Building an intuition about energy
2 days ago
Building an intuition about energy
Willem's Blog
Your own addressbook and calendar cloud
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data...
over a year ago
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data and share it between your devices.
Arduino Blog
This machine automatically creates chain art
Art is very personal and we often consider the process of creation itself when evaluating the...
5 months ago
Art is very personal and we often consider the process of creation itself when evaluating the resulting piece. Does a sculpture have more artistic value when molded by human hands rather than a 3D printer? Most would say that it does. But what if the automation was, itself, part...
Applied Cartography
Improving Django's default pagination performance
Buttondown's API calls are very fast, and one of the reasons why is that we've removed every single...
4 months ago
Buttondown's API calls are very fast, and one of the reasons why is that we've removed every single possible database query that we can.
The most recent was what looked like a fairly benign COUNT(*) query, coming from the default Django paginator; if you're gonna paginate things,...
Home on Erik...
σ-driven project management: when is the optimal time to give up?
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as...
over a year ago
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as Why software projects take longer than you think, which is a blog post I wrote a long time ago positing that software projects completion time follow a log-normal distribution.
OH8HUB’s Substack
A quick visit to Vaajasalo island
Vaajasalo is a small island in lake Kallavesi in eastern Finland with population less than hundred....
a year ago
Vaajasalo is a small island in lake Kallavesi in eastern Finland with population less than hundred. There’s also a winery called Alahovi Berry Wine Farm. They produce berry wines, cider, beer and liqueur. The temptation to visit them was huge, but I was on tight schedule. Maybe...
anderegg.ca
More details on Bluesky’s subscription plan
Update: I had missed this, but the Bluesky team had already announced a subscription model was on...
2 weeks ago
Update: I had missed this, but the Bluesky team had already announced a subscription model was on the way. I had written this article assuming that was the news. What is new is the work happening on their official apps, which contains details on features and potential pricing. An...
Arduino Blog
Why is STEAM education important for kids? 6 activity tips
School’s out for summer – at least for most of us. While the majority of children (and teachers!)...
5 months ago
School’s out for summer – at least for most of us. While the majority of children (and teachers!) will probably be breathing a huge sigh of relief, parents face a new challenge: how to keep kids engaged during the long break. Of course, downtime is important, but there are also...
Applied Cartography
Always use an enum for your status field
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now...
3 months ago
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now — I was thrilled by the concept of an "architecture review", and by extension the concept of a "Principal Engineer" (Amazon's term for a staff-level engineer, someone beyond...
Applied Cartography
Projects are things with steps
Lots of kind words poured in as a response to My approach to GTD and PKM, and one question was asked...
a month ago
Lots of kind words poured in as a response to My approach to GTD and PKM, and one question was asked so frequently that I decided to write about it.
Why is “Get mom a birthday present” a project and not a task?
GTD is very orthodox in what a “project” is: it’s anything that:
you...
Home on Erik...
Google diversity memo, global warming, Pascal's wager, and other stuff
There's about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple...
over a year ago
There's about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple of weeks ago. I think the case for any biological difference is pretty weak, and it bothers me when people refer to an “interest gap” as anything else than caused by the...
Jonas Hietala
On The Decline of FPS Games
Mr. Eriksson just sent me this link as a fitting video on my post on The Decline of FPS...
over a year ago
Mr. Eriksson just sent me this link as a fitting video on my post on The Decline of FPS Games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU
Oh How true!
Posts on Made of...
Dear Twitter: Stop screwing over your developers.
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online...
over a year ago
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online communities, and is a surprisingly effective way to spread news and information to lots of people online. One of the things that I’ve loved about Twitter is their API, and how open and...
watchTowr Labs -...
Pots and Pans, AKA an SSLVPN - Palo Alto PAN-OS CVE-2024-0012 and CVE-2024-9474
It'll be no surprise that 2024, 2023, 2022, and every other year of humanities' existence has been...
a month ago
It'll be no surprise that 2024, 2023, 2022, and every other year of humanities' existence has been tough for SSLVPN appliances.
Anyhow, there are new vulnerabilities (well, two of them) that are being exploited in the Palo Alto Networks firewall and SSLVPN offering, and as ever,...
Willem's Blog
Six months with MCADD
It's six months since our son was born with MCADD, a good moment to reflect upon the experience of...
over a year ago
It's six months since our son was born with MCADD, a good moment to reflect upon the experience of being a parent with some thoughts and tips.
Avestura's Blog
Creating a Git commit: The Hard Way
Let's create a Git commit using Git's low-level (plumbing) commands
3 months ago
Let's create a Git commit using Git's low-level (plumbing) commands
Willem's Blog
Escaping the flat tires
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some...
over a year ago
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some time, but alas - here it is!
Matt Mullenweg
RIP Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones had such an impact on the culture that it’s impossible to summarize. His discography is...
a month ago
Quincy Jones had such an impact on the culture that it’s impossible to summarize. His discography is amazing. I feel so lucky to have met him in 2012 when I was much earlier in my career, and he didn’t have any reason to give me time, but he treated everyone as if they were...
Arduino Blog
Arduino Education at Bett 2025: Shaping the future of K-12 and HE
Mark your calendars… Arduino Education is coming to Bett UK 2025! Taking place for three days from...
5 days ago
Mark your calendars… Arduino Education is coming to Bett UK 2025! Taking place for three days from January 22nd-24th at the ExCeL exhibition center in London, Bett is the ultimate global event for educational innovation. We are attending the stand with our partner CreativeHut...
Home on Erik...
Headcount goals, feature factories, and when to hire those mythical 10x people
When I started building up a tech team for Better, I made a very conscious decision to pay at the...
over a year ago
When I started building up a tech team for Better, I made a very conscious decision to pay at the high end to get people. I thought this made more sense: they cost a bit more money to hire, but output usually more than compensates for it.
Notes on software...
Checking linearizability in Go
You want to check for strict consistency
(linearizability)
for your project but you don't want to...
a month ago
You want to check for strict consistency
(linearizability)
for your project but you don't want to have to deal with the
JVM. Porcupine,
used by a number of real-world systems like etcd and TiDB, has you
covered!
Importantly, neither Jepsen projects nor Porcupine can...
Good Enough
Our Favorite Video Games Right Now
While everyone at Good Enough is their own kind of nerd, thank you very much, as builders of the web...
a year ago
While everyone at Good Enough is their own kind of nerd, thank you very much, as builders of the web you probably expect that we also play video games. And we do! Well, collectively we do, but not to an unhealthy degree. Usually.
I asked the team to share with me what their...
Willem's Blog
Designing my own watch
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical...
over a year ago
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical annual calendar designed to be understated and true to the metal.
Simply Explained
Impact of Adblockers on Google Analytics (vs. Plausible)
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have...
over a year ago
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have one installed. Not only do they block advertisements, but also analytics scripts (like Google Analytics, Matomo, etc.)So that begs the question: what is the impact of these...
./techtipsy
I held a talk about my self-hosting adventure!
There are two reasons why I haven’t written much lately, and one of them is that I was cooking up...
a year ago
There are two reasons why I haven’t written much lately, and one of them is that I was cooking up a
talk about self-hosting, more specifically my own self-hosting adventure (the other one is the Steam Deck, more about
that in the future).
The talk took place on May 25th 2023 at...
./techtipsy
My server setups throughout the years
My self-hosting adventure started during my university days. Once I actually had money to buy myself...
over a year ago
My self-hosting adventure started during my university days. Once I actually had money to buy myself a decent used laptop
(ThinkPad T430) that had more than 3GB of RAM that my ThinkPad T60 had, I could use some of my older hardware as
testbeds for any of the stupid ideas that I...
Jonas Hietala
2023 in review
This is my yearly review #14.
Amazing that I’ve kept up with this for 14 years.
Even though it’s not...
11 months ago
This is my yearly review #14.
Amazing that I’ve kept up with this for 14 years.
Even though it’s not anything advanced, I really like looking back at the year to see what has happened.
Maybe it’s a very light version of a reverse bucket list, and I can see that it provides some...
Posts on Made of...
Navigating the Linux Kernel
In response to my query last time, ezyang asked for any tips or tricks I have for finding my way...
over a year ago
In response to my query last time, ezyang asked for any tips or tricks I have for finding my way around the Linux kernel. I’m not sure I have much in the way of systematic advice for tracking down the answers to questions about the Linux kernel, but thinking about what I do when...
Willem's Blog
Collecting health data with Biostrap
Wearing a clinical-grade PPG sensor for a month to collect advanced biometrics from my wrist.
over a year ago
Wearing a clinical-grade PPG sensor for a month to collect advanced biometrics from my wrist.
Willem's Blog
Developing a native iOS app
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with...
7 months ago
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with some help from AI? Read along to find out!
Jonas Hietala
Changes
A lot has been going on lately and it feels like I’m being swamped. I can’t complain too much but...
over a year ago
A lot has been going on lately and it feels like I’m being swamped. I can’t complain too much but there are things I’d like to change after the exam period this week.
Program more!
nothing since christmas or someting. I need to finish:
Ada project for school. Can’t believe I...
Matt Blewitt
Regular Restarts Are Good, Actually
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on...
a month ago
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on compute units, known as “dynos”. This is actually a good thing, but very misunderstood.
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON path parser
Let's say we want to implement a simple list filtering language so
we can enter a.b = 12 and return...
over a year ago
Let's say we want to implement a simple list filtering language so
we can enter a.b = 12 and return only results in a
list where the a column is an object that contains a
field b that is set to the value 12. What would a
filter(jsonPath, equals, listOfObjects) function...
Home on Erik...
More MCMC – Analyzing a small dataset with 1-5 ratings
I've been obsessed with how to iterate quickly based on small scale feedback lately. One awesome...
over a year ago
I've been obsessed with how to iterate quickly based on small scale feedback lately. One awesome website I encountered is Usability Hub which lets you run 5 second tests. Users see your site for 5 seconds and you can ask them free-form questions afterwards.
Jonas Hietala
2013 Read Books
I actually read more books in 2013 than in 2012.
In a somewhat unorganized list:
Fiction
Livet...
over a year ago
I actually read more books in 2013 than in 2012.
In a somewhat unorganized list:
Fiction
Livet Deluxe - Jens Lapidius
Escape from camp 14 - Blaine Harden
Wonderful. A great book.
Edge - Jeffery Deaver
Dollar - Lee Child
Gisslan - Lee Child
Bränd - Lee Child
Besökaren - Lee...
Louwrentius
Using iSCSI with time machine and Super Duper
In the past, as a Mac user, I've used separate external drives for Time Machine backups and Super...
over a year ago
In the past, as a Mac user, I've used separate external drives for Time Machine backups and Super Duper clones but I'm not happy with that. External hard drives make noise and create clutter.
I'd like to move away all my storage from my living room (or home office) and put it in...
Posts on Made of...
Some musings on ORMs
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application,...
over a year ago
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application, particularly a web-app, has a love/hate relationship with their ORM, or object-relational mapper.
On the one hand, ORMs are vastly more pleasant to work with than code that constructs...
Posts on Made of...
Distributed cloud builds for everyone
CPU cycles are cheaper than they have ever been, and cloud computing has never been more ubiquitous....
over a year ago
CPU cycles are cheaper than they have ever been, and cloud computing has never been more ubiquitous. All the major cloud providers offer generous free tiers, and services like GitHub Actions offer free compute resources to open-source repositories. So why do so many developers...
Opsbros
Nix Windows Feedback
There turns out to be a far easier way to disable the 'Win+F' Windows Feedback app.
over a year ago
There turns out to be a far easier way to disable the 'Win+F' Windows Feedback app.
Jonas Hietala
Autocomplete with nvim-cmp
Autocomplete tags in the frontmatter.
Autocompletion is an absurdly powerful feature that I—and I...
7 months ago
Autocomplete tags in the frontmatter.
Autocompletion is an absurdly powerful feature that I—and I must assume most programmers—use all the time.
It’s not as crucial for writing blog posts as when you’re coding but it’s still easy to come up with examples of how autocomplete...
Home on Erik...
Benchmark of Approximate Nearest Neighbor libraries
Annoy is a library written by me that supports fast approximate nearest neighbor queries. Say you...
over a year ago
Annoy is a library written by me that supports fast approximate nearest neighbor queries. Say you have a high (1-1000) dimensional space with points in it, and you want to find the nearest neighbors to some point.
Willem's Blog
Creating a minimal road bike
I wondered how hard it would be to make a bike from spare parts I had in my garage
over a year ago
I wondered how hard it would be to make a bike from spare parts I had in my garage
Applied Cartography
Are monopolies bad, actually?
One of the more interesting theses advanced by Zero to One [1] is that monopolies are good to the...
9 months ago
One of the more interesting theses advanced by Zero to One [1] is that monopolies are good to the extent that they afford companies the agency and comfort to engage in long-term activities:
Monopolists can think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t. In...
Simply Explained
ESP32: Keep WiFi connection alive with a FreeRTOS task
I have a few ESP32's running in my house. A few of them are running 24/7 and require an always-on...
over a year ago
I have a few ESP32's running in my house. A few of them are running 24/7 and require an always-on WiFi connection. That's been quite tricky to implement. I used to include various checks throughout my code, but that's not scalable.What I need is something running in the...
csvbase blog
Take the tools out of 'Data', but don't take the data out of the tools
Using dataframes to write smaller, faster programs
a year ago
Using dataframes to write smaller, faster programs
Notes on software...
Be someone who does things
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to...
3 months ago
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to follow that up by saying that the only thing more important
than wanting to do something is to actually do something.
The most valuable trait you can develop for yourself is to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Zk-SNARKs: Under the Hood
over a year ago
Style over Substance
Buienalarm / Buienradar Apple Watch complication using Home Assistant
Living in the Netherlands, one of the things I really miss on my Apple Watch is a Buienradar...
over a year ago
Living in the Netherlands, one of the things I really miss on my Apple Watch is a Buienradar complication. Buienradar, Dutch for rain radar, is a popular site here that uses weather radar images to predict if it’s going to rain in the next few hours. For many people living here,...
Home on Erik...
Analyzing 50k fonts using deep neural networks
For some reason I decided one night I wanted to get a bunch of fonts. A lot of them. An hour later I...
over a year ago
For some reason I decided one night I wanted to get a bunch of fonts. A lot of them. An hour later I had a bunch of scrapy scripts pulling down fonts and a few days later I had more than 50k fonts on my computer.
./techtipsy
The simplicity of the modulo operator: how I scaled an inefficient solution on a legacy system
Your service cannot process events fast enough during peak hours.
There is no obvious quick and...
a year ago
Your service cannot process events fast enough during peak hours.
There is no obvious quick and dirty fix.
Refactoring would take ages.
People have been unhappy for a while now.
What the hell do you do?
Background
I had the pleasure of working with a legacy backend system...
Louwrentius
Improving iSCSI Native Multi Pathing Round Robin performance
10 Gb ethernet is still quite expensive. You not only need to buy appropriate NICS, but you must...
over a year ago
10 Gb ethernet is still quite expensive. You not only need to buy appropriate NICS, but you must also upgrade your network hardware as well. You may even need to replace existing fiber optic cabling if it's not rated for 10 Gbit.
So I decided to still just go for plain old 1...
Arduino Blog
Adjusting office chair height with simple voice commands
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized...
4 months ago
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized height adjustment. That worked well, but required that he push buttons to raise or lower the seat. Pushing those buttons is a hassle when one’s hands are full, so ElectronicLab...
./techtipsy
Steam Deck: I like it
I got a Steam Deck.
Only took me a year or so of contemplating getting
one, and trying out HoloISO,...
6 months ago
I got a Steam Deck.
Only took me a year or so of contemplating getting
one, and trying out HoloISO, the unofficial SteamOS installer
finally convinced me to get one.1
It took another year to actually get down to writing down my thoughts on it.
This post is written from the...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Grifters, believers, grinders, and coasters
Why do engineers get mad at each other so often? I think a lot of programmer arguments bottom out...
2 weeks ago
Why do engineers get mad at each other so often? I think a lot of programmer arguments bottom out in a cultural clash between different…
Old Vintage...
Thou shalt follow these Vintage Computing Commandments
Thou shalt check voltage and polarity on new-to-thee power supplies, or thy machines shall be smote...
10 months ago
Thou shalt check voltage and polarity on new-to-thee power supplies, or thy machines shall be smote and release smoke. This is sometimes very hard to judge without a load, but they should be somewhere in the ballpark, verily, and you should get in the habit of checking any new...
lcamtuf’s thing
Shining light on photodiodes
Photodiodes are incredibly versatile, but commonly misused and misunderstood.
2 months ago
Photodiodes are incredibly versatile, but commonly misused and misunderstood.
Matt Blewitt
A Love Letter to Giant Robots
Ah, giant robots. I grew up thinking they are the coolest things ever, and I still do. My first...
6 months ago
Ah, giant robots. I grew up thinking they are the coolest things ever, and I still do. My first exposure to them was probably through 1994’s BattleTech animated series, where Adam Steiner piloted an AXM-2N Axman, in its frankly ridiculous neon green and purple paint job. And from...
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: Canon Cat
It's the Memorial Day holiday weekend and it's time for a little deferred maintenance, especially on...
6 months ago
It's the Memorial Day holiday weekend and it's time for a little deferred maintenance, especially on those machines I intend to work on more in the near future. So we'll start with one that's widely considered to be a remarkable cul-de-sac in computing history: the Canon...
Willem's Blog
Influencing purchase behaviour
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance,...
over a year ago
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance, conversion rates and online revenue. Use this useful report to apply behavioural sciences principles to your advantage.
Jonas Hietala
Settled on an unoriginal idea
I think I’ve decided what to do. Some very slight progress has been made.
over a year ago
I think I’ve decided what to do. Some very slight progress has been made.
Good Enough
Why We Built Quack (Beta)
Today we're launching a tiny beta tool called Quack. It is a simple utility for you to share a...
a year ago
Today we're launching a tiny beta tool called Quack. It is a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any markdown text. Type away in our simple editor. When you're done writing, click Share to grab the link for sending to others. There are no servers in...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing for iteration speed
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about...
over a year ago
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about some concrete things you can do. When I've built up the tech team at Better, I've intentionally optimized for fast iteration speed above almost everything else.
./techtipsy
Control - how to make a game enjoyable for casual audiences
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year,
since it’s a relatively...
a year ago
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year,
since it’s a relatively healthy way to escape from the real world once in a while.
A friend recommended one game in particular: Control: Ultimate Edition.
During the Steam summer sale of 2023, I went...
Arduino Blog
This Arduino-controlled machine dispenses the perfect bowl of cereal
Breakfast cereal is controversial. Milk or cereal first? Best cereal to milk ratio? Favorite cereal?...
7 months ago
Breakfast cereal is controversial. Milk or cereal first? Best cereal to milk ratio? Favorite cereal? Most attractive mascot? The opportunities for debate never end. But we can all agree that consistency is key when it comes to the milk:cereal ratio — nobody changes that up from...
Arduino Blog
DexteriSync lets you walk a mile in the gloves of a user with manual disability
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with...
a month ago
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with disabilities that affect their perception and fine motor skills. A young person without disabilities, for example, may feel that jars are easy to open, while an elderly person with reduced...
Posts on Made of...
The architecture of declarative configuration management
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing...
over a year ago
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing increase in the number and popularity of declarative configuration management tools. This post attempts to lay out my mental model of the conceptual architecture and internal...
Good Enough
TIL: Listen for JavaScript events only once!
A common thing I find myself doing in Javascript is adding some event driven behavior that I only...
a year ago
A common thing I find myself doing in Javascript is adding some event driven behavior that I only want to happen once. Let’s say I have a big button that starts the process of lowering a certain spy into a pool of certain doom — I don’t want a second button press to awkwardly...
Louwrentius
My 71 TiB ZFS NAS after 10 years and zero drive failures
My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going...
3 months ago
My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going strong.
Although now on its second motherboard and power supply, the system has yet to experience a single drive failure (knock on wood).
Zero drive failures in ten years, how is that...
Home on Erik...
Why I went into the mortgage industry
I just realized last Thursday that I have spent two full years at Better, incidentally on the same...
over a year ago
I just realized last Thursday that I have spent two full years at Better, incidentally on the same day as we announced a $15M round led by Kleiner Perkins. So it was a good point to reflect a bit and think back – what the F led me to abandon my role managing the machine learning...
Louwrentius
How to resolve extreme memory usage on Windows 2008 R2-based file servers
I'm responsible for a file server with about 5 terrabytes of data. The file server is based on...
over a year ago
I'm responsible for a file server with about 5 terrabytes of data. The file server is based on Windows 2008 R2. I've noticed extreme memory usage on the server. After a reboot, it slowly builds up until almost all RAM memory is consumed.
So I googled around and found this post...
Posts on Made of...
Reflections on software performance
At this point in my career, I’ve worked on at least three projects where performance was a defining...
over a year ago
At this point in my career, I’ve worked on at least three projects where performance was a defining characteristic: Livegrep, Taktician, and Sorbet (I discussed sorbet in particular last time, and livegrep in an earlier post). I’ve also done a lot of other performance work on the...
latest projects -...
3D Model Viewer Improvements
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
a year ago
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
Jonas Hietala
Mailto: links with FastMail in Firefox
You can change the application to handle mailto: links in Firefox in Preferences -> Applications....
over a year ago
You can change the application to handle mailto: links in Firefox in Preferences -> Applications. The problem is that you can’t input custom urls and some email providers, like hotmail or fastmail, aren’t supported. I managed to fix it with the plugin MailtoWebmails. It annoys me...
Home on Erik...
My issue with GPU-accelerated deep learning
I've been spending several hundred bucks renting GPU instances on AWS over the last year. The...
over a year ago
I've been spending several hundred bucks renting GPU instances on AWS over the last year. The speedup from a GPU is awesome and hard to deny. GPUs have taken over the field. Maybe following the footsteps of Bitcoin mining there's some research on using FPGA (I know very little...
Jonas Hietala
Failed mime type for Krita
I thought Krita worked fine… Until I tried to save. Krita crashed whenever I tried to save (or open)...
over a year ago
I thought Krita worked fine… Until I tried to save. Krita crashed whenever I tried to save (or open) a file and gave the error:
Could not find mime type "application/x-krita"
Turns out if you reinstall the package shared-mime-info which comes natively with Slackware the...
On Life and Lisp
Conformant OpenGL 4.6 on the M1
For years, the M1 has only supported OpenGL 4.1. That changes today –
with our release of full...
10 months ago
For years, the M1 has only supported OpenGL 4.1. That changes today –
with our release of full OpenGL® 4.6 and OpenGL® ES 3.2! Install Fedora for the latest
M1/M2-series drivers.
Already installed? Just dnf –refresh
upgrade.
Unlike the vendor’s non-conformant 4.1 drivers, our...
computers are bad
2023-11-25 the curse of docker
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza...
a year ago
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza there could be. In that spirit, I thought I would write
something quick and oddly professional: I'm going to complain about Docker.
Packaging software is one of those fundamental...
Neil Madden
From KEMs to protocols
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care...
over a year ago
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care about them. Part 1 looked at what a KEM is and the KEM/DEM paradigm for constructing public key encryption schemes. Part 2 looked at cases where the basic KEM abstraction is not...
Applied Cartography
Two weeks of parenthood
We've had Lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about...
2 months ago
We've had Lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about parenthood. (In all seriousness, consider the below descriptive and not prescriptive: mostly, it's a notepad filled with things that were remarkable or surprising or divergent from...
Louwrentius
Things you should consider when building a ZFS NAS
ZFS is a modern file system designed by Sun Microsystems, targeted at enterprise environments. Many...
over a year ago
ZFS is a modern file system designed by Sun Microsystems, targeted at enterprise environments. Many features of ZFS also appeal to home NAS builders and with good reason. But not all features are relevant or necessary for home use.
I believe that most home users building their...
Applied Cartography
buttondown.com/alternatives
Some kind words from Chris Krycho on Buttondown's Alternatives page:
This is how I want all my tools...
a week ago
Some kind words from Chris Krycho on Buttondown's Alternatives page:
This is how I want all my tools to be. There is a ton of room in these markets for healthy and friendly competition — and no need at all for winner-take-all or monopolist attitudes.
First off — credit where it's...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Beebop The Island Hopper
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop...
over a year ago
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop The Island Hopper for the theme Islands.
About Ludum Dare
Ludum Dare is a competition which runs maybe two times a year and the competition is 24 hours long with a specific theme....
Odds and Ends of...
How to fix The Observer
Slow news is good news?
3 weeks ago
Jonas Hietala
September theme: Failure
I’m out of the busy mode and here’s the new theme! I’ve got an idea and I’ll be beginning very soon...
over a year ago
I’m out of the busy mode and here’s the new theme! I’ve got an idea and I’ll be beginning very soon I hope and again I’m following Experimental Gameplay Project’s site.
Let’s rock!!
Louwrentius
Buying a new computer
*** Desktop or Laptop ***
When deciding on which computer to buy, the first decision you have to...
over a year ago
*** Desktop or Laptop ***
When deciding on which computer to buy, the first decision you have to make is about whether to go for a desktop or a laptop. There was a time that many believed that the desktop would become a niche product. Most people want a laptop because they can...
Jonas Hietala
Drawing a self portrait
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m...
over a year ago
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m really slow so I stopped a bit before it really was finished.
Obviously I’d like it to be a bit better, but I’m still a little happy about the glasses and the eyebrows. The mouth...
Avestura's Blog
Using Tor outside of the Tor Browser
This post shows how to run Tor with a simple PowerShell script and use it in other apps like...
over a year ago
This post shows how to run Tor with a simple PowerShell script and use it in other apps like Telegram...